This article is part of a larger ethnographic study on teaching and learning in one of Australia's only stand-alone adolescent New Arrival Programs (NAPs) for students learning English. These multilingual adolescents represent four world regions: the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, and East Asia. Eventually, they will enter mainstream high schools. Instead of grade levels, the school uses initial language and literacy assessments to assign students Pathways, which determine their lengths of stay in the NAP. The school focuses on intensive English language instruction and social/emotional well-being through subject-area lessons, electives, excursions, community partnerships, personal wellness, and clubs. Through all of these efforts, the collective goal is to prompt students to use literacy and language as tools for living with the past and interpreting new experiences in Australia. According to the author, Mary and Roger teach in the school's Pathway A program, where students typically come from refugee backgrounds. Pathway A students have had unreliable access to formalized schooling due to displacement, poverty, and simple or complex health issues. While new to English, the students are all experienced language learners. In this particular state, students in Pathway A attend the NAP for up to two years before transitioning into mainstream high schools. Previous or current trauma affects these students' progress in written literacy; sometimes, they appear afraid, resistant, or anxious about new experiences. Most of the time, however, they smile and laugh, play soccer at recess, sing, dance, use social media, misbehave, and engage in a range of typical adolescent behaviors. Students' trauma does not define them. Some might see these students as leagues behind their native English speaking counterparts, but Mary and Roger know they are substantially ahead in their linguistic, cultural, and life experiences.